Dutch chipmaker NXP makes China push by backing radar company Hawkeye

Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors has come a long way since Qualcomm’s outsize $44 billion to acquire it fell through last year. In an announcement released on Tuesday, NXP said it’s agreed to back and partner with Hawkeye Technology, a Chinese company specializing in automotive radars, as part of an ambition to capture the rapid growth of sensor-powered vehicles in China.

Financial terms of the investment were undisclosed, but the tie-up will see Hawkeye providing a suite of technical know-how to NXP. That includes the Chinese company’s engineering team, a research lab it set up with Southeast University in the Chinese city of Nanjing, and its 77Ghz radar, a long-range sensing technology that enables cars to detect crashes down to sub-millimeter accuracy.

Under the agreement, NXP and Hawkeye will work together to create reference designs rather than retail products.

“The fast development of ADAS [Automatic Data Acquisition System] and autonomous driving technologies has raised new requirements for vehicle-based millimeter radar,” said Alex Shi, co-founder and chief executive of Hawkeye. “By partnering with NXP, Hawkeye will focus on providing advanced millimeter wave radar system level solutions as well as comprehensive technical support for Tier 1 customers.”

The deal is a smart move for NXP, whose claim to fame is its chips for car-related applications, as it strives to be a key player in China’s autonomous driving race. Hawkeye may be little known, but not its CEO. Shi was the former boss of Banma Network, a joint venture between ecommerce behemoth Alibaba and Chinese state-owned automaker SAIC Motors, which is the key force to commercialize Alibaba’s connected car solutions.

In April 2015, Shi and a group of other prominent auto figures from China founded Hawkeye with an initial registered capital of 30 million yuan ($4.5 million).

The Hawkeye funding arrived less than a year after Qualcomm dropped its proposed buyout of NXP, which was set to be one of the largest in the semiconductor space but ended up as a collateral damage in rising trade tensions between China and the U.S. Qualcomm had mulled buying NXP as early as September 2016.

China remained a focus for NXP, which assured that its alliance with Hawkeye is evidence of its “confidence in the Chinese market” and “determination to continuously invest in the country,” said NXP president Kurt Sievers in a statement.

“Innovators in automotive, like Hawkeye and Southeast University, have become the driving force for the transformation of China’s automotive industry. We are pleased to collaborate with these excellent partners, leveraging NXP’s leadership in the fast-growing radar semiconductor market to improve road safety,” Sievers added.